‘The Shepherd And The Bear’ Added To Camden International Film Festival As Surprise Closing Night Film: “Unforgettable, Visually Stunning”

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EXCLUSIVE: The prestigious Camden International Film Festival has announced a surprise addition to its 2024 lineup: The Shepherd and The Bear, a documentary described as a “modern folk tale.” The film directed by Max Keegan and produced by Keegan, Elizabeth Woodward, and Emmy winners Amanda McBaine and Jesse Moss, will serve as the closing night film for CIFF’s 20th edition.

The festival, a program of the Points North Institute, unfolds in the picturesque Central Maine coast towns of Camden and Rockland. [Scroll for the full list of CIFF documentaries]. “Set high in the majestic French Pyrenees, The Shepherd and The Bear explores a conflict provoked by the reintroduction of brown bears in the midst of a traditional shepherding community,” according to a release from CIFF. “The film follows an aging shepherd who struggles to find a successor as bears prey on his flock, and a teenage boy who becomes obsessed with tracking the bears.

Through its breathtaking cinematography and immersive storytelling, The Shepherd and The Bear is a modern folktale about tradition, community and humanity’s relationship with a vanishing natural world.” CIFF notes that Keegan moved to France and spent three years there working on his film, “learning French from scratch,” adding, “The production of this immersive vérité project was intensive, both technically and physically… The team lived full time as part of the mountain community for two years during production, filming in some of the most remote and treacherous mountain terrain in France.

The film was cut by French editor Sabine Emiliani, known for her work on the Oscar-winning March Of The Penguins. The film is scored by renowned French composer Amine Bouhafa (Four Daughters), and